American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2019 - 91

ConventionSection: Texas Alliance of Energy Producers
Infrastructure, which includes the Alliance
and other oil and gas industry representatives, Stevens says.
"Quite frankly, we don't think we
even can negotiate on it because some
things have been changed that we thought
were laid to rest," he says. "I don't know
if we will be able to negotiate with the
landowners unless we negotiate against
ourselves."
Two unfavorable provisions in the
2019 proposal include requiring infrastructure parties such as pipelines to pay
escalating penalties if initial rights-ofway offers fall outside specified ranges
of final offers, and requiring infrastructure
parties to pay all attorneys' fees throughout
the negotiating process, Stevens explains.
"The new bills don't call them attorneys' fees, but they certainly quack like
a duck," he quips.
Last session, the coalition, including
oil and gas, electric transmission, pipelines,
counties, municipalities and state agencies,
negotiated provisions with a landowner
group that included agricultural and ranching representatives and environmentalists,

Stevens says.
The sides reached agreement on four
of seven contentious items and the Senate
passed a bill, only to see the measure fail
in the House after lawmakers received
letters from landowner groups that claimed
that their property rights were being trampled, he recalls.
This time around, the infrastructure
group also is concerned because the bills
appear to single out the private sector for
regulation by excluding similar requirements for public entities, Stevens says.
RRC Funding
Alliance leaders have met with Texas
Railroad Commission members about the
agency's budget and support the commission's base line budget request of
$252.75 million, which is close to its
2018-19 biennium budget, Tintera says.
"The best defense against federal bureaucracy overreaching deep into the
heart of the oil field is a strong, vibrant
and healthy state regulator, and we want
the RRC to meet that standard," he emphasizes. "We support the RRC budget

and will testify in its favor. We think it is
using the money very wisely and has increased the number of inspectors across
the state dramatically across all disciplines."
Although the RRC is seeking no fee increases, an increase may find support in
the future if federal agencies bequeath more
regulatory primacy to Texas, Beck says.
"It's more important to have state control
than to deal with the feds," he reflects.
The agency's budget request seeks an
additional 22 full-time pipeline inspectors
and $10 million to modernize the commission's IT systems and utilize data
storage in the cloud instead on mainframe
computers, Stevens details.
The RRC also is asking for $39 million
to continue plugging orphaned wells,
which compares closely with the last
budget, he says, adding that the agency
is exceeding its well-plugging goals.
Injection Alternatives
On Feb. 6, the House Energy and
House Natural Resources committees conducted a joint hearing on produced water

MARCH 2019 91
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2019

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